comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol II

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at least, that the crust of the globe admits of only variations so limited and so gradual as not to interfere with the natural course of social devel- opment,—a development which could not be hoped for under any liability to violent and frequent physico-chemical convulsions of any extent in the area of human life. There is thus more room to apprehend that inorganic philosophy is not advanced enough to supply the conditions of a positive polity, than to suppose that any real political philosophy can be framed in independence of inorganic science We have seen before, however, that there is a perpetual accordance between the possible and the indispensable What we must have, we are able to obtain; and if there are, as in the case of the mutual action of different starry systems, cosmical ideas which are inaccessible to us, we know, in regard to sociology now, as to biology before, that they are of no practical importance to us. Wherever we look, over the whole field of science, we shall find that, amidst the great imperfection of inorganic philosophy, it is sufficiently advanced, in all essential respects, to contribute to the constitution of true social science, if we only have the prudence to postpone to a future time investigations which would now be premature.

I observed in a former chapter that no disturbing causes, acting on social development, could do more than affect its rate of progress. This is true of the operation of influences from the inorganic world, as of all others. In our review of biology we saw that the human being cannot be modified indefinitely by exterior circumstances, that such modifications can affect only the degrees of phenomena, without at all changing their nature; and again, that when the disturbing influences exceed their general limits, the organism is no longer modified, but destroyed. All this is, if possible, more eminently true of the social than of the individual organism, on account of its higher complexity and position. The course of its development must therefore be regarded as belonging to the essence of the phenomenon itself, and therefore essentially identical in all conceivable hypotheses about the corresponding medium. It is true we can easily imagine, as I said just now, that so delicate an evolution may be prevented by external disturbances, and particularly astronomical perturbations, which would not destroy the race; but as long as the evolution does proceed, it must be supposed subject to the same essential laws, and varying only in its speed, as it traverses the stages of which it is composed, without their succession or their final tendency being ever changed. Such a change would be beyond the power of even biological causes. If, for instance, we admitted some marked alterations in the

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human organism, or, what comes to the same thing, conceived of the social development of another animal race, we must always suppose a common course of general development. Such is the philosophical imposed by the nature of the subject, which could not become positive, except in as far as it could be thus conceived of; and this is much more conspicuously true in regard to inorganic causes. As to the rest, this is only another illustration of what we have so often seen in the course of our survey of the scientific hierarchy,—that if the less general phenomena occur under the necessary preponderance of the more general, this subordination cannot in any way alter their proper laws, but only the extent and duration of their real manifestations.

One consideration remains, of the more importance because it applies especially to physico-chemical knowledge, which we seem to have rather neglected in this sketch for astronomical doctrine: I mean the considerations of Man’s action on the external world, the gradual development of which affords one of the chief aspects of the social evolution, and without which the evolution could not have taken place as a whole, as it would have been stopped at once by the preponderance of the material obstacles proper to the hunted condition. In short, all human progress, political, moral, or intellectual, is inseparable from material progression, in virtue of the close interconnection which as we have seen, characterizes the natural course of social phenomena. Now, it is clear that the action of Man upon nature depends chiefly on his knowledge of the laws of inorganic phenomena, though biological phenomena must also find a place in it. We must bear in mind, too, that physics, and yet more chemistry, form the basis of human power, since astronomy, notwithstanding its eminent participation in it, concurs not as an instrument for modifying the medium, but by prevision. Here we have another ground on which to exhibit the impossibility of any rational study of social development otherwise than by combining sociological speculations with the whole of the doctrines of inorganic philosophy.

It cannot be necessary to repeat here that which has been established as true with regard to the other sciences, and which is more conspicuously true as each science becomes more complex—that an adequate general knowledge of all the preceding, sciences in the hierarchy is requisite to the understanding of the one that f allows. In the case of sociology the absence of this preparation is the obvious cause of the failure of all attempts to regenerate the Science. We desire to recognize in it a positive science, while we leave the conditions of positivity unful-

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filled. We do not even form a just idea of the attributes of positivism. of what constitutes the explanation of a phenomenon, of the conditions of genuine investigation, or of the true intention in which hypotheses should be instituted and employed. We must thoroughly understand all these conditions, and use them in the natural order of the development of the sciences, venturing neither to select nor transpose, but following up the increasing complexity of the sciences, and recognizing the increase of resources which accompanies it, from astronomy with its simplicity of phenomena and of means of research, to sociology with its prodigious complexity and abundance of resources. Such discipline as this may be difficult, but it is indispensable. It is the only preparatory education which can introduce the positive spirit into the formation of social theories.

It is clear that this education must rest on a basis of mathematical philosophy, even apart from the necessity of mathematics to the study of inorganic philosophy. It is only in the region of mathematics that sociologists, or anybody else, can obtain a true sense of scientific evidence, and form the habit of rational and decisive argumentation; can, in short, learn to fulfil the logical conditions of all positive speculations, by studying universal positivism at its source. This training, obtained and employed with the chore care on account of the eminent difficult of social science, is what sociologists have to seek in mathematics. As for any application of number and of a mathematical law to sociological problems, if such a method is inadmissible in biology, it must be yet more decisively so here, for reasons of which I have already said enough. The only error of this class which would have deserved express notice, if we had not condemned it by anticipation, is the pretension of some geometers to render social investigations positive by subjecting them to a fanciful mathematical theory of chances. This error is in analogy with that of biologists who would make sociology to be a corollary or appendix to their own science by suppressing the function of historical analysis. The error of the geometers is however by far the worst of the two, in itself, as well as because mathematicians are peculiarly tenacious of error, from the abstract character of their labours, which dispenses them from the close study of nature. Gross as is the illusion, we must remember its excusable origin. It was James Bernouilli who first conceived the notion; and the notion affords evidence of the nascent need to subject social theories to some kind of positivity. None but a high order of mind could have so early felt the need, and if the expedient was vicious, there

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was no better way discernible by any possibility at that time. The error was much less pardonable when the notion was reproduced by Condorcet, in a more direct and systematic way; and his expectation from it, as manifested in his celebrated posthumous work, shows the fluctuating state of his mind in regard to the primary conception of social science. But there is no excuse for Laplace’s repetition of such a philosophical mistake, at a time when the general human mind had begun to discern the true spirit of political philosophy, prepared as it was for the disclosure by the labours of Montesquieu and Condorcet himself, and powerfully stimulated besides by a new convulsion of society. From that time a succession of imitators has gone on repeating the fancy, in heavy algebraic language, without adding anything new, abusing the credit which justly belongs to the true mathematical spirit; so that, instead of being, as it was a century ago, a token of a premature instinct of scientific investigation, this error is now only an involuntary testimony to the absolute impotence of the political philosophy that would employ it. It is impossible to conceive of a more irrational conception than that which takes for its basis or for its operative method a supposed mathematical theory, in which, signs being taken for ideas, we subject numerical probability to calculation, which amounts to the same thing as offering our own ignorance as the natural measure of the degree of probability of our various opinions. While true mathematical theories have made great progress, for a century past, this absurd doctrine has undergone no improvement except in some matters of abstract calculation which it has given rise to. It still abides in the midst of its circle of original errors, while mankind are learning, more and more, that the strongest proof of the reality of speculation in any science whatever is the fruitfulness of the conceptions belonging to it.

It is with a feeling of shame that I revert so often to the great maxims of philosophical pursuit, and dwell on them so long; that I should have to announce at this time of day that we must study simpler phenomena before proceeding to the more complex; and that we should acquaint ourselves with the agent of any phenomenon, and with the medium or circumstances, before we proceed to analyse it. But so different has been the course of political study pursued in the metaphysical school, that I rather apprehend that this high scientific connection will be exactly the part of my philosophical doctrine which will be least appreciated and perhaps most contested, even after all the confirmation which I am about to offer. The reason of this apprehension is that the

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positive method is in direct opposition to our political habit of appealing to all sorts of minds on social questions, which they are expected to judge of, without any regular preparation, as if these problems were occasions for inspired decision. It is this consideration which makes me attach so special an importance to an. explanation of the relation of Sociology to the other sciences.

To complete the account of these encyclopedic relations, we must look at the connection in an inverse way, estimating the philosophical reaction of social physics on all the foregoing sciences, in regard both to doctrine and method.—It must be at the end of the work that I must treat of Sociology as completing the whole body of philosophy, and showing that the various sciences are branches from a single trunk, and thereby giving a character of unity to the variety of special studies that are now scattered abroad in a fatal dispersion. In this place I can only point out, in a more special manner the immediate reaction of Sociology on all the rest of natural philosophy in virtue of its own scientific and logical properties.

In regard to the doctrine, the essential principle of this reaction is found in the consideration that all scientific speculations whatever, in as far as they are human labours, must necessarily be subordinated to the true general theory of human evolution. If we could conceive of such a thing as this theory being so perfected as that no intellectual obstacle should limit the abundance of its most exact deductions, it is clear that the scientific hierarchy would be, as it were, inverted, and would present the different sciences, in an a priori way, as mere parts of this single science. We have no power to realize such a state of things; but the mere supposition may enable us to comprehend the legitimate general intervention of true social science in all possible classes of human speculation At first sight, it appears as if this high intervention must belong to the biological theory of our nature, and it was by that avenue that philosophers first caught a glimpse of the conception: and it is perfectly true that the knowledge of the individual man must exert a secret, but inevitable influence over all the sciences, because our labours bear the ineffaceable impress of the faculties which produce them. But a close examination will convince us that this universal influence must belong more to the theory of social evolution that to that of individual Man, for the reason that the development of the human mind can take place only through the social state, the direct consideration of which must therefore prevail whenever we are treating of any results of that develop-

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ment. This is, then, in the briefest form, the first philosophical aground of the intellectual intervention of social physics in the cultivation of all the parts of natural philosophy. There will be more to say about it hereafter.

It is evident that Sociology must perfect the study of the essential relations which unite the different sciences, as this inquiry constitutes an essential part of social statics, directly intended to disclose the laws of such a connection, in the same way as in all cases of connection between any of the elements of our civilization. The most marked instance of this operation of social science is in the direct study of social dynamics, in virtue of the principle, so familiar to us by this time, that true co-ordination must be disclosed by the natural course of the common development. All scientific men who have viewed their own particular subject in a large way have felt what important benefit might be afforded by corresponding historical information, by regulating the spontaneous expansion of scientific discoveries, and warning away from deceptive or premature attempts. I need not set forth the value that there would be in a history of the sciences. which is keenly felt by all who have made any important discovery in any science whatever: but, as my last chapter proves, no real scientific history,—no theory of the true filiation of eminent discoveries, at present exists in any form or degree. We have only compilations of materials mole or less rational, which may be of some provisional use, but which cannot be afterwards employed in the construction of and historical doctrine without strict revision, and which are certainly in their present state unfit to yield any happy scientific suggestions. When a true social science shall have been founded, such labours will assume the philosophical direction of which they are at present destitute. and will aid that development of human genius which now, in the form of unorganized erudition, they merely impede. If we remember that no science can be thoroughly comprehended till its history is understood we shall see what special improvements this new science must introduce into each of the rest, as well as into the co-ordination of them all.

This leads us to consider the reaction of sociology on the other sciences in regard to Method. Without entering at present upon the great subject of a general theory of the positive method, I must just point out the established truth that each of the fundamental sciences specially manifests one of the chief attributes of the universal positive method, though all are present, in more or less force, in each science. The special

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resource of sociology is that it participates directly in the elementary composition of the common ground of our intellectual resource es. It is plain that this logical co-operation of the new science is as important as that of any of the anterior sciences. We have seen that sociology adds to our other means of research that which I have called the historical method and which will hereafter, when we are sufficiently habituated to it, constitute a fourth fundamental means of observation. But, though sociology has given us this resource, it is more or less applicable to all orders of scientific speculation. We have only to regard every discovery, at the moment it is effected, as a true social phenomenon, forming a part of the general series of human development, and, on that ground, subject to the laws of succession, and the methods of investigation which characterize that great evolution. From this starting-point indisputable in its rationality’, we comprehend immediately the whole necessary universality of the historical method, thenceforth disclosed in all its eminent intellectual dignity. We can even see that, by this method, scientific discoveries become in a certain degree susceptible of rational prevision, by means of an exact estimate of the anterior movement of the science, interpreted by the laws of the course of the human mind. The historical precision can hardly become very precise; but it may furnish preparatory indications of the general direction of the contemporary progress, so as to save the vast waste of intellectual forces which is occasioned by conjectural attempts, usually doomed to failure. By this process of comparison of the present with the past, in regard to each science, it must become possible to subject the art of discovery to a kind of rational theory which may guide the instinctive efforts of individual genius, which cannot hold its course apart from the general mind, however persuaded it may be of its separation. The historical method will thus, by governing the systematic use of all other scientific methods, impart to them an amplitude of rationality in which they are now deficient, by transferring to the whole that regulated progression which at present, belongs only to the details: and the choice of subjects for investigation, till now almost arbitrary, or, at least thoroughly empirical, will acquire, in a certain degree, that scientific character which now belongs only to the partial investigation of each of them.—The method itself must, if it is to accomplish these purposes, be subject to the philosophical conditions imposed by the positive spirit of sociology. It must never consider the development of each complete science, separately from the total progression of the human mind, or even from the fundamental evolution of

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humanity. Thus social physics, which supplies this method, must superintend its gradual application,—at least, in so far as the general conception of human development is concerned. Every partial or isolated use of this method of investigation, such as suits the desultory character of research in our day, would be either wholly ineffectual, or would realize but little good. There are some traces in existing science of this superior means of speculation, the positive method being uniform, and therefore to be found everywhere if anywhere; but its complexity and its recent origin prevent our being able to point to examples at once marked and varied enough to afford a decisive manifestation. Throughout the whole range of our positive knowledge, I know of only one unquestionable example; and that will be found, where we should naturally look for it, in mathematical science. We find it in the sublime prefatory chapters of the different sections of the “Analytical Mechanics,” so little appreciated by ordinary geometers because they do not contain a single formula, but, in my opinion, proving the eminent philosophical superiority of Lagrange to all mathematicians since Descartes and Leibnitz. By his exposition of the filiation of the chief conceptions of the human mind in regard to rational mechanics, from the origin of the science to our own time, Lagrange certainly anticipated the general spirit of the historical method; because he made this estimate the basis of the whole of his own scientific speculations. These remarkable writings are admirable food for meditation not only to geometers, but to all philosophical minds, which may find here the only example of what may property be called History, though their author made no pretension to the common title of historian.

Thus we see that the reaction of Sociology on the other sciences is as important in a logical as in a scientific view. On the one hand, positive sociology mutually connects all the sciences, and on the other hand, it adds to all resources for investigation, a new and a higher method: While, from its nature, dependent on all that went before, Social Physics repays as much as it receives by its two kinds of service towards all other knowledge. We can already perceive that such a science must form the principal band of the scientific sheaf, from its various relations, both of subordination and of direction, to all the rest. It is in this way that the homogeneous co-ordination of real sciences proceeds from their positive development, instead of being derived from any anti-scientific conceptions of a fanciful unity of different phenomena, such as have hitherto been almost exclusively resorted to.

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Social science must always remain inferior in all important speculative respects to all the other fundamental sciences. Yet we cannot but feel, after this review of its spirit, its function, and its resources, that the abundance of its means of investigation may establish it in a higher position of rationality than the present state of the human mind might seem to promise. The unity of the subject, notwithstanding its prodigious extent, the conspicuous interconnection of its various aspects, its characteristic advance from the most general to more and more special researches, and finally the more frequent and important use of a priori considerations through suggestions furnished by the anterior sciences, and especially by the biological theory of human nature, may authorize the highest hopes of the speculative dignity of the science,—higher hopes than can be excited by such an imperfect realization as I propose to sketch out, the purpose of which is to embody, in a direct manner, and by sensible manifestations, the more abstract view which I have now taken of the general nature of this new political philosophy, and of the scientific spirit which should regulate its ulterior construction.

Chapter V

Social Statics; or, Theory of The Spontaneous Order of Human Society

Though the dynamical part of Social Science is the most interesting, the most easily intelligible, and the fittest to disclose the laws of interconnection, still the Statical part must not he entirely passed over. We must briefly review in this place the conditions and laws of harmony of human society, and complete our statical conceptions, as far as the nascent state of the science allows when we afterwards survey the historical development of humanity.

Every sociological analysis supposes three classes of considerations, each more complex than the preceding: viz., the conditions of social existence of the individual, the family, and society; the last comprehending, in a scientific sense, the whole of the human species, and chiefly, the whole of the white race.

Gall’s cerebral theory has destroyed for ever the metaphysical fancies of the last century about the origin of Man’s social tendencies, which are now proved to be inherent in his nature, and not the result of utilitarian considerations. The true theory has exploded the mistakes through which the false doctrine arose,—the fanciful supposition that

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intellectual combinations govern the general conduct of human life, and the exaggerated notion of the degree in which wants can create faculties. Independently of the guidance afforded by Gall’s theory, there is a conclusive evidence against the utilitarian origin of society in the fact that the utility did not, and could not, manifest itself till after a long preparatory development of the society which it was supposed to have created. We shall the better see how the supposition involves us in a vicious circle if we attend to the character of the early ages of humanity, in which the individual advantages of association are very doubtful, if indeed we may not safely say that, in many cases, the burdens are greater than the resources, as we see only too plainly in the lowest ranks of the most advanced societies. It is thus evident that the social state would never have existed if its rise had depended on a conviction of its individual utility, because the benefit could never have been anticipated by individuals of any degree of ability, but could only manifest itself after the social evolution had proceeded up to a certain point. There are even sophists who at this day deny the utility, without being pronounced mad; and the spontaneous sociability of human nature, independent of all personal calculation, and often in opposition to the strongest individual interests, is admitted, as of course, by those who have paid no great attention to the true biological theory of our intellectual and moral nature.

Passing over some elementary considerations which belong rather to a special treatise on the physiological conditions,—such as the natural nakedness of the human being, and his helpless and protracted in- fancy,—which have been much exaggerated as social influences, since they exist in some animal races without producing the same social con- sequences,—I proceed to estimate the influence of the most important attributes of our nature in giving to society the fundamental character which belongs to it, and which remains permanent through all degrees of its development. In this view, the first consideration is of the preponderance of the affective over the intellectual faculties, which though less remarkable in Man than in other animals, yet fixes the first essential idea of our true nature.—Though continuous action is, in all cases, an indispensable condition of success, Man, like every other animal, has a natural dislike to such perseverance, and at first finds pleasure only in a varied exercise of his activity,—the variety being of more importance to him than moderation in degree,—especially in the commonest cases, in which no strongly marked instinct is concerned. The intellectual facul-